Category: Giving Them Their Roses
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PEPPER LABEIJA
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blessed are those who mother the children the world left alone to mind themselves. blessed are the queens who build a queendom for these children to survive and thrive. pepper labeija was both mother and queen and on this #mothersday weekend, we speak her name. born on november 5, 1948…
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KIYOSHI KUROMIYA
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in the late 1980’s, the only approved hiv treatment medication available was AZT. when it hit the market in 1987, there was hope that it would save the day. that didn’t happen. in fact, the side effects of AZT were brutal and caused many to discontinue use. this meant that…
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NAYOBE
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if you ask the causal freestyle music listener who the “queen of freestyle” is, you may get a few different answers. some will say lisa lisa, or judy torres or maybe even lisette melendez. while those answers are not necessarily wrong, as each of those three women contributed to the genre…
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MELVIN LINDSEY
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growing up in the 1990’s, there were ballads and then there were slow jams. that distinction mattered in the early 90’s. today, with the advent of streaming, it is a norm to consume multiple genres in just one playlist. but in 1990, that required more work. if you wanted to…
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SELENA
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My love for Selena would begin as a young brown boy growing up in Tucson, Arizona. As a first generation Mexican-American, and child of immigrant families, her story of embracing her Chicanaroots is what mirrored most in my life. From my earliest of memories, all I know is singing and dancing…
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HECTOR VALLE XTRAVAGANZA
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the year was 1982. states, with a record 637,451 reported felonies by the end of 1981.one year into what is now known as the AIDS epidemic but before the urging of activists during a july 27 meeting in new york to adopt the term “AIDS”, much of the media, researchers, and medical providers called…
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HYDEIA BROADBENT
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Last august, Hydeia Broadbent celebrated her 35th birthday. this wasn’t just a milestone but a testament to the sheer determination of life and hope. Diagnosed with HIV at three years old, hydria was not expected to survive past age five. And in 1987, years almost a decade before the breakthrough…
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THE GOOD GIRLS
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by the late 80’s, motown records, the label that invented the r&b cross-over sound in the 60’s, was struggling to remain relevant. with new jack swing dominating radio, motown signed several young acts to compete with the musical landscape. the good girls were one of those acts. in late 1989,…
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LORENA BORJAS
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long known as a mother, activist and defender of trans women, sex workers and undocumented LGBTQIA folks, lorena borjas dedicated her life to the liberation of those living on the margins. lorena immigrated to the new york from veracruz, mexico in 1981 – just as the AIDS epidemic was beginning…
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VITO RUSSO
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people living with AIDS formed coalitions for each other years before the US present ronald reagan publicly acknowledged AIDS. people living with AIDS mobilized to feed, house, nurse, care, and fight for themselves and each other. they became their own researchers, lobbyists, and drug smugglers. and this was done before…
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LA DELFI
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La Delfi was a pioneer and visionary. To carve out a space in a music genre that has been and continues to be dominated by cis-het men, La Delfi forged just of unprecedented successes for herself, but for queer dominican dembow artists including up and coming queer La Kristy. For…
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THE B-52s
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i always knew i was gay. i don’t have a coming out story because i was always “out” or whatever that meant for a 13 year old in 1990. i didn’t begin to identify as queer until much later in my life. partly, because in 1990, i didn’t even know…